Anybody else have to deal with salt building up on hydro components? I run FloraKleen through the system for a couple of hours each week before I change out fluid / nutrients. Still, I have to disassemble the water rings (running through the red cups in the picture) and scrape them to unblock the holes. I have changed nutrients, but stay organic, without any improvement. Any tips? Thanks.
well i'm not very familiar with those water rings, but i'm not surprised they are clogging on you. pretty much anything with small holes such as those that have solution running through them will clog eventually, aeroponics misters included. i'm surprised they are clogging within a week though. are you using distilled/RO water or city water? if city, is the water hard water to start with? is your solution on the rich side? IMHO you should switch to dwc bubblers. they are just so damn easy and you won't have to deal with clogging. if you don't like that idea there are only a couple other things i can think of. you could increase the water pressure (get a bigger pump) to force water through the holes with more power which shouldn't allow as much buildup. you could also make the holes larger but all that is going to do is buy you more time until you have to clean them. not sure how much this will help, hopefully someone with experience with those rings can give a better answer.
I am on a well that draws from a spring and it is really hard water. After a quick search, I found several sites that provide info on putting together dwc bubbler systems. It looks like it is worth exploring. Thanks much Humandraydel for the reply.
okay, so the hard water is your main problem then. getting an RO machine should help the problem considerably. they aren't too awful expensive but they aren't cheap either. they are sort of a pain in the ass but they make controlling pH of any hydro/aero solutions a LOT easier. do you have problems controlling your pH with the hard water? as i'm sure you'll read in some research regarding bubblers, pH is the most important part of the system (well, any hydro system really). if you have problems controlling pH of the hard water you may consider looking into General Hydroponics Hardwater Micro...i've never used it but i've heard good things about it for controlling extremely hard water (pH of 8.0+ to start)...unfortunately the GH hardwater micro isn't organic. i'm not sure if there is something similar in an organic nute line or not, but it'd be worth checking into. your young plant looks good, btw.
